THE NETWORK: A CONTEMPORARY TOOL FOR THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF URBANISM.

INTRODUCTION

This project is a conceptual response towards a generic high rise city in which the skyscraper is implanted. This generic situation is not contextual.
Doing so, we can attribute to it characteristics that seem to us common to all high rise cites, with out having to analyze were the high rise city that
gathers the most of our conceptual characteristics.

This conceptual approach makes us try to define a generic response to all high rise cities. If we would have responded to the contest by developing
one Skyscraper in a defined place it would have crystallized the response in such a way that it would have became a response to a defined situation.
It is not our will to give a response or to focus on the formal answer. Our aim is to insist on the interaction between: the site, the urban fabric, the
programs and the surrounding skyscrapers.

FROM ISOLATION TO URBANITYHigh rise cities are made of a three dimen-
sional environment that is distributed by a
one plan system of irrigation. All the other
ways of circulating in the towers are private
and finish in a dead-end. The Hub aims to
give alternative ways of circulating in the
city. These circulations offer new urban qua-
lities to the users, giving new perspectives of
the urban space, making the Hub and its sur-
roundings work as a three dimensional urban
network.

High rise buildings are isolated from urban fabric.The Hub reduces the isolation by adding connections between the existing towers.

BUILT AND PERCEPTED VOIDBUILT AND PERCEPTED VOIDBUILT AND PERCEPTED VOID

This urbanism is characterized by cumulating
all the circulations at the foot of buildings.
The Hub offers human scale circulation that
makes it possible to go trough the whole
city, offering the existent void that becomes
a real built urban space with a more human
scale environment. The void becomes a built
urban space because of the network of con-
nections that irrigates it. The city becomes
a multi dimensional environment in which a
more radical and intense experience of spa-
ce is possible.

Traditional high rise cities are out of scale because urbanism is on the ground.The development of several Hubs gives a third dimension to existing urbanism.

CIRCULATIONS

A Hub is made to concentrate flux in hence
to redistribute them in a more equilibrated
way. This equilibrium is reached by a new
and diversified way of circulating trough the
urban fabric. Circulations have different
speeds depending on the distance to reach.
They are composed of different mechanical
systems, each one adapted to the local or
global way of going trough the urban fabric.
The vertical structure integrates all flux’s
and vertical connections. Connecting them
to the existent urban network of public
transports.

Adding connections to the local underground and to the existing skyscrapers makes cities more fluid.

GRAVITY AND INERTY

The Hub is a complete and autonomous struc-
ture. It‘s connections hold on there own.
They do not need to stand on the existing
buildings. The tower in built around a cen-
tral core that is composed of a main vertical
structure that holds plateaus that can be of
very different shapes and that can transform
freely.
The Hubs shape is round to allow multiple
connections all around the tower. This neu-
trality is only shaped by the several connec-
tions.
This structural composition depends of the
span distance of the towers that are in the
environment of the Hub. The bigger the span
the more important the extension has to be
to equilibrate the tower. This system makes
the formal aspect unique and totally depen-
dent of the environment.

PROGRAM

The Hub is a multi programmatic autonomous structure
that articulates it way of functioning with the existing
environment. It gives the possibility to the surrounding
skyscrapers to extend themselves and have a part of there
programs functioning in it.
Programs have the possibility of being along the link and
extending in a series of plateaus depending on the needs
of each situation. The plateaus are flexible to be able to
give a larger amount of possibilities.
These programs are irrigated and owe their cohesion to
the system of public spaces and circulations that are the
main central part of the building.